Friday, April 11, 2008

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is being labeled a threat to Microsoft's platform dominance, with the operating system's new features such as Spaces, and the Mac's ability to run Windows, being cited as symptoms of the effect. BusinessWeek writer Gary Morgenthaler states that Apple's OS is loosening a "20-year death grip" that Microsoft has had on the industry, especially when combined with VM solutions such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. "So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac's iPhoto," writes Morgenthaler. "And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange."

Morgenthaler argues that the upcoming iPhone 2.0 upgrade and the SDK will also help shift members of the Microsoft camp to Apple, since the combination of a dual OS platform with a developer-friendly device with immense popularity could be a winning combination.

He also states that the power and flexibility of the Mac OS kernel allows it to be condensed to as little as a megabyte to scale down to devices such as the iPod touch, whereas Vista's sits at around the gigabyte mark. Vista's patchwork nature has caused for slower computing performance, and notoriously slow disk access times.

Morgenthaler also cites Apple's technology innovation, such as the implementation of the multi-touch trackpads on the MacBook Air and Pro.